17 March 2016

10 Words Derived From Irish

A full list of words the English language owes to Irish would range from the fairly obvious (leprechaun,banshee) to the fairly surprising (trousers,Tory,slob), with a few etymological question marks thrown in for good measure. One of these ishooligan, which we’velooked at on the blog before, and another, which we’ve included in the video, iskibosh.

People have been bringing things to a halt byputting the kibosh onthem since the early nineteenth century. Although we’ve included it here in our list of ten Irish words, the theory that it derives from an old Irish expression,caidhpín bháis, for an judge’s black “cap of death” is by no means conclusive—competing theories variously attribute the word to everything from Yiddish to Scots, while others suggest it is and always has been a purely English word.

So if not derived from Irish, why do weput the kibosh onthings? Well one theory is that theki-ofkiboshis the same as in words likekersplash!andkaboom!—in other words, it’s just there to emphasise the “bosh” (i.e. the stout hit or blow) that comes after it. Or perhapskiboshis derived from an even earlier sound-alike, like caboshed(a heraldic term for an animal shown on a coat of arms from the neck up only),kye-boots(a Scots English word for a dairy cow’s shackles), or even courbache(the French name for an Arabian rhinoceros-hide horsewhip). Or maybe it’s from the Yiddish word for “eighteen coins”, which might once have been a slang word for a throwaway amount of money? (Shameless plug: there’s a bit more on that inthe HaggardHawks factbook...)

In truth, etymologists aren’t entire surely, but we’re signing up to the Irish theory here—alongside nine other fascinating Irish etymologies…